April 05, 2005
Iced Coffee: Lawyers Dename the Starbucks Delocator

Carrie at Stay Free! points to a legal absurdity around the fun Starbucks Delocator, a site that helpfully offers less corporate alternatives to Starbucks.

The only problem is that Finishing School [the work's creators] signed an agreement with the San Francisco Art Institute saying that they won't use the name "Starbucks" in the website name (presumably to avoid legal action from Starbucks), so the site is called "Delocator" instead of Starbucks Delocator. This means that links to the site won't show up in search engines when people search for Starbucks...

Clearly there's no law that would prevent the artsite from naming the store it's protesting. (Even more clearly after the Ninth Circuit's Bosley Medical.) Enter the blogs. Viva the Starbucks Delocator.

Posted by Wendy at 09:32 AM